A record of flying adventures past and present. In the long run, it's all retro.

Sunday, July 03, 2016

About This Blog

(This post is future dated to appear near the top of my posts - today's actual date is 12/15/14.)

This blog is a journal (of sorts) about learning to fly. It started as a retro-journal (writing years after the fact of my original 1997-2001 lessons, from notes I had kept for myself, which are not yet completely converted to this blog - there are gaps). I did a little flying in 2004 (only one post here so far). Then in summer 2011, I started flying again (tail wheel lessons), and it became a current flight lesson journal for a while.

Flying seems to be such a sporadic thing for me (except as an airline passenger, which is pretty regular). I flew a lot in July and August 2011, flying with Ed Urbanowski in his wonderful Citabria, finally learning to land a tail dragger. Then I stopped. Why? Business travel, general work-load at work, family stuff. The usual suspects. I really wanted to get the tail wheel endorsement this year but I just didn't make it, and here it is winter already.

As of this writing, my recent non-airline flights have been "warbird" flights with the Collings Foundation. One was on September 26, 2011. It was in a B-24 Liberator bomber, and I was not at the controls (but it was a VERY cool flight). I was briefly at the Norden bombsite (shown above). No stick time in this beast! The other was in an AT-6 Texan aerobatics flight at the Collings Headquarters in Stow, MA, during one of their historic airshows in August 2012. It was short, but lots of fun (see below). I got some stick time, and Rob Collings showed me some simple aerobatics, loops and barrel rolls. I would love to do more of that! That was the original reason I was interested in tailwheel training, since most common aerobatic planes are tail draggers.

8 comments:

That is awesome! I used to flight instruct, back in the day, and my airport's FBO had an actual Norden Bombsite a local guy had bought and left out there to display. Wow. Talk about way over my head lol. I can only imagine how many lessons I would need to learn how to use that thing!

Do you play any flight simulators? I used to play Flightsim X, but I found Pro Flight Simulator which is nice as it has more aircraft. They have a couple tail wheels :)

I have a few friends that have gone to flight school and I have another friend who's a flight attendant. She flies all the time! I think that could be a cool job to fly everywhere and travel, but it would be stressful too because you'd have to actually do the flying. I hope you started your flying again!

I've always wanted to fly. I've played lots of flight sim games and my brother and I have always talked about it. I think he may end up actually achieving his goal. I'm just going to be a teacher.http://www.harfordair.com/services/

My experience with flight school was both fun and exciting. The instructors were so great to work with and I saved a pretty penny by attending a flight school in Oregon. Plus, I didn't have to pay sales tax! http://www.flyhaa.com/en/page/helicopter_flight_training_courses They are worth checking out.